Raphael hadn’t yet experienced such. Even when he’d begun to go cold before he met Elena, empathy fading into cruelty, he’d still been interested in the world. “Will you cover Michaela’s sweep of China, Mother?”
“Of course—she cannot risk any kind of infection. Is she protected? A babe is a strong drain on an archangelic mother’s energy.” A smile, a pat of his forearm. “I never minded, but I had Nadiel to watch over me and our gorgeous black-haired babe. You say Michaela claims the child alone.”
Memories from a distant corner of his past, of splashing in a bath while his mother laughed, of how she’d wrapped him up in a towel and carried his wet body close, uncaring of her pretty gown. “If no one has revealed Michaela’s secret till now,” he said through the heaviness in his chest, “then I think she has the right people around her.”
“Good. I will speak to her of such things as only an archangelic mother can understand.” Her hand rising to brush his hair off his forehead, as if he were a youngling. “We must be creatures of power while our hearts are on display to the world. It is a good thing that among our kind, to kill a child is an unforgivable offense. Else, I would’ve burned the world to the ground to protect you.”
“Did it take you a long time to recover your strength after my birth?” He’d been a youth when she’d left him broken and bleeding on that verdant green field. Such questions hadn’t come to him then.
“No, not so long. The archangelic body heals quickly. But I had a wound all the same—and I have it to this day.” The depth of her smile told him she was quite content with that. “You will always be the babe I rocked in my arms. When you hurt, I hurt. And I would still burn down the world for you.”
“No, Mother, you will not.”
A deep stillness to her. “You fear my madness even now.”
“Time is a winged beast for mortals, but for us, it is a creeping tide.” It would take him centuries, longer, to accept that Caliane’s sanity was here to stay. “You have been awake but a heartbeat.”
“When did you get so philosophical, my young Rafa?” A childhood pet name he hadn’t heard for an eon. “I left behind a wild, impulsive boy who wore his anger like a second skin, and came back to an archangel in firm control of his world but for his fascination with a mortal.” Laughter broke her motionlessness. “So . . . I think the wild boy remains in the man you have become. Still tweaking the noses of the stuffy and the rigid.”
For an instant, they were just mother and son. “According to Elena, half of angelkind thinks I have lost my mind and are waiting to see if I will regain it.”
They spoke of small things in the ten minutes that passed; of the newborns in Amanat, of the homes being repaired, of how his mother wished him to admit a vampire maiden into his Tower. “She is too fierce a thing for Amanat. If she wishes to return later, I will welcome her home, but I think to force her to stay here would be to smother her.”
“I will ask Dmitri to organize a transfer.”
Caliane’s next words were far more pensive. “A strange thing, is it not? That an archangel’s womb becomes fertile during a time of catastrophic change?” She looked up at the moon. “I think before this is over, the world will be altered in more ways than one.”
The words held the ring of a prophecy, raising the hairs on the back of Raphael’s neck, but he reminded himself that his mother was no seer. She wasn’t Cassandra, who’d once dreamed of a mortal become an angel, then risen to see her dream in brilliant, living color.
He deliberately changed the subject. “Elena mentioned today that she has never seen an image of Father.” The ones in the ancient stronghold of Lumia didn’t count; all those had been of his father’s death as witnessed by a traumatized young angel. Hair of fire, eyes of flame. All his colors had been submerged in the angelfire that was his death.
Sadness draped around Caliane’s shoulders like a heavy cloak, but intermingled with it was a smile drenched in love. “I keep my favorite portrait of Nadiel in my quarters.” She squeezed his forearm. “Tell Elena to join us. We will go see your father.”
33
Elena had never before been in Caliane’s private quarters. Raphael met her outside, told her his mother was waiting within. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected; what she got was both surprising and not. The space was exquisite in the way of a being who had lived millennia upon millennia and could choose from an endless number of cultures and designs.
The palette was white and a pale gold for the most part, the high walls of the hallway in which she walked covered in a wallpaper that stole her breath. Delicate and lovely, the design proved to be lovingly hand-painted. The floor wasn’t glossy marble but a warm glowing wood of pale honey, the curtains that hung over the large windows a white muslin so fine it was air.
It was a warm and welcoming space . . . until you got to the floor-to-ceiling doors that blocked the way to Caliane’s inner sanctum. Heavy iron, they bore the emblem of two crossed swords. Elena stopped far enough away that she could take in the entirety of the massive block of metal, and after a while, began to see elements hidden within the initially bold design.
Each of the swords, for one, was unique, the hilts boasting intricate designs that had nothing in common yet were somehow complementary.
“My father’s.” Raphael pointed to the right. “My mother’s.” The one on the left. “His burned up during his death and she broke hers into pieces and threw it into the ocean.”
A stab in Elena’s heart. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend what it would’ve cost Caliane to execute the man she loved so deeply, a love she hadn’t found until an eon into her long existence.
She deliberately brushed her body against Raphael’s as they took several more steps. Oh. “I almost missed all the other designs.” Intricate pieces that made no sense until you were close enough to see the details.
Raphael touched one particular panel. “My birth.”
She saw the child then, cradled within two palms, one masculine, one feminine. It was a stylized image, the infant not visible except as soft curves and a hint of wings on the back, but she put her fingers on the panel and smiled. “Finally, I get to see baby photos of you.”
No laugh from her archangel, his eyes on two panels high on the right-hand corner that seemed shinier than the others. “Those were not there before.”
Squinting, she tried to see what he had . . . Her skin tightened. A blaze of light. A falling angel, his wings broken and fire licking up his body. Nadiel’s fall. Right below that was a panel with the collapsed body of another angel, his wings crumpled and his body shattered until his limbs twisted into the wrong shape.